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One of the UK’s biggest housebuilders has hit out at government planning policy as new figures emerged showing a steady decline in the number of larger family homes being built.

The number of homes constructed with four bedrooms or more halved between 2001 and 2011, from around 50,000 to 25,000, research carried out by law firm Nathaniel Lichfield & Partners and Cala Homes found.

Since 1991, only 28pc of new homes built have had four bedrooms or more, which Cala blamed on rules that require developers to build a minimum of 30 dwellings per hectare, favouring smaller homes.

The housebuilder warned that with the rise of the UK’s middle classes and a growing trend among the nation’s ageing population for “empty nesting”, more home owners are now demanding larger houses. It claimed more than 700,000 households in England are overcrowded.

Price inflation for large detached family homes has significantly outpaced that of other housing types over the last 20 years, further putting the squeeze on families looking to move up the housing ladder.

Recent government policy has focused on boosting housing supply for first time buyers through new initiatives such as the Help to Buy scheme, which provides mortgage guarantees and equity, and Starter Homes.

Cala wants the Government to review housing policy to give large home development at least equal weighting to that of smaller homes – saying it is currently too biased towards first time buyers. It also criticised the Government’s strategy to encourage older or single people to downsize, saying the policy will never contribute sufficient numbers of homes to affect housing supply.

Alan Brown, chief executive of Cala, said the policies failed to meet “the real demands of growing families across the country”.